Taiwan Straits Game Theory

The psychology of strategic ambiguity in “the most dangerous place on earth”

Human beings have a very hard time dealing with low-likelihood events with very high consequences. We either let it drive us bonkers and over-react a la 9/11, or we dismiss it out of hand like the folks who insisted well into 2020 that COVID-19 is just like the flu.

Now just imagine living under that level of uncertainty for decades. Welcome to Taiwan, or as The Economist magazine puts it, the most dangerous place on earth. 😬

People predictably went crazy holding their boba high and chiding the Economist for not putting the proper moral judgement on China. I was guilty of doing this myself, hence me shopping the Chinese map onto the Economist cover. But of course the Economist wasn’t making a normative statement that Taiwan is somehow wrong or bad for being a dangerous country, it is simply making a positive statement that Taiwan simply IS the most dangerous place on earth from a global geopolitical perspective.

The forecast-aggregator site metaculus.com currently gives a 37 percent chance that China will annex most of Taiwan by the year 2050, the median of 285 predictions. I’m no superforecaster but that sounds about right to me. Of course, just as Schrödinger’s cat cannot be 37 percent dead, Taiwan cannot be 37 percent mostly annexed by 2050. On a year-by-year basis, the forecast is for a low-likelihood, high-consequence event, exactly the kind we humans find difficult to handle. Now the question is…what do we do with that?

🤫 Strategic ambiguity is good actually

The first hard pill to swallow is that we need to hold desperately to as much strategic ambiguity as we possibly can, because the very thing that is making us all crazy is actually one of our best plays for risk mitigation.

The game theory reason for this is simple: just like in any high-stake game of poker, you don’t want to show your hand. Let’s say China is determined to invade, if it knows that the US is for sure going to come to Taiwan’s aid, it is likely to go all in on that first invasion attempt, guaranteeing massive bloodshed. However, if it is not sure, it is more likely to try another tactic to take Taiwan bloodlessly, such as via a blockade.

This will actually give the US and other allies time to come to Taiwan’s aid.

😬 Actual ambiguity is very, very bad

The problem with strategic ambiguity is that if we do it too good it could turn into actual ambiguity. The US is a democracy. If the official line is “meh, we might or might not help out with TW” is the US grand public going to be prepared for rapid action when history comes calling? What if domestic public opinion gums up the works? After 20 years in Afghanistan, what is the appetite of the American people for war? And while it is true that Taiwan is much more strategically important to the US than Afghanistan, we might have to take into consideration the fact that the average American voter might have a hard time distinguishing Taiwan from Thailand, let alone Taiwan’s importance in the First Island Chain strategy.

🥺 Building the Taiwanese brand internationally is very good

As the Chinese military powers up, it’s becoming increasingly probable that the US alone isn’t going to be able to help fend off a Chinese invasion with any degree of certainty. This means we will need the help of allies. With its successful COVID-19 response, nimble cat-warrior diplomats and reputation as a vibrant democracy, Taiwan is easy to love for many countries, especially if they are in the process of being menaced by China.

I won’t go into the geopolitical reasons why many countries wouldn’t want Taiwan to go red, but all those reasons can be further strengthened with good soft-power relations-building.

😬 Flirting with Taiwanese independence is very bad

Double-edged swords all over the place. The rise of the Taiwan brand, Taiwan pride and more people identifying as Taiwanese, the very thing that is good for horizontal escalation, is also going to cause more Taiwanese to want to ACTUALLY be independent. President Tsai did this Jedi mind trick thing where she said “well Taiwan doesn’t need to declare independence. It is already independent.” Smart, right? No red lines crossed, just magically appear on the other side. What can Beijing do?

But there is no guarantee that her successor will have Tsai’s light touch, and her veep is now already flirting with heavy handed “Taiwan is a sovereign state” language. It’s a cursed game of “I’m not touching you” where Beijing gets to decide whether a red line has been crossed, not Taipei.

🤑 It simply doesn’t make sense for China to invade…

It’s hard to think of a scenario where China ends up in a better place because it invaded Taiwan. Even if everything goes perfectly planned, its supply chains, international relationships, projected economic growth will all be in tatters. If we think of the CCP as a organism that is focused on its survival, it just doesn’t make sense to do this high-risk no-reward thing.

😬 …but it doesn’t mean they won’t

Look, did it make sense for me to get wasted the night before I had to hold a potluck for 14 vegans? No. Did it happen? Yes, yes it did.

Unfortunately, Xi has pretty explicitly said he intends to get Taiwan reunification done on his watch. He’s 67 years old. If we have a “mad man surrounded by yes men” scenario where Xi’s generals are confidently telling him Taiwan can be easily taken and he believes them, he could make a miscalculation that end up being costly for Taiwan and the world.

Basically, we can’t get into Xi’s head. This means an invasion of Taiwan is going to remain unthinkable, until it becomes inevitable. We cannot count on the sanity of somebody who has already shown himself of making terrible decisions on the behalf of the country he leads to keep Taiwan safe.

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This post is already too long, and I haven’t even gotten to the reason I started writing it, which is Natasha Kassam and Mark Harrison’s piece in the Guardian, where they argue that Australian officials need to tone down their rhetoric with regards to the possibility of war and Australia’s possible participation.

mhar4的麥加芬。 @mhar4

From me and @natashaskassam on Australia and tension in the Taiwan Strait

theguardian.comStoking fears of war could serve China’s goals. Australian policy needs rethinking | Natasha Kassam and Mark HarrisonTensions in the region are escalating, but trumpeting the coming threat of war plays into Beijing’s goals and risks undermining Taiwan further

My take on this moment in time is that alliances are being forged right now that will be called upon in a future war scenario and that the temperature will fall once those ties are staunch. The Quad, especially, are going to be core to any competent defense of Taiwan. After talking to Kassam herself, it seems her article is warning that there is actually no high-level political commitment to Taiwan in Canberra and that the security officials have gotten ahead of themselves with their Drums of War talk.

I do not know enough about Australian politics to comment on whether or not Kassam is correct. However, I do find the following paragraph by Harrison and Kassam most incorrect:

Catastrophism intimidates the Taiwanese people and countries in the region, exacerbates domestic political division, deters growing US-Taiwan and multilateral regional cooperation, and convinces the region that it faces a stark choice between disaster and what Beijing calls “reunification”.

There is NO appetite in Taiwan for reunification. The danger is not that the threat of war would intimidate Taiwanese people into preemptively give up their freedom. The real danger is by not taking the low possibility, high-consequence threat of invasion seriously, the Taiwanese might lose the de-facto freedom that they enjoy right now.

Taiwan is, quite simply, not on a war footing. The “insurance” for the possible hurricane of war has not been purchased.